Hiraeth
by A. Farnese
Summary: A thousand and more years have passed since Arthur's death, and Merlin still awaits his return, wondering more and more if it was all real, or if Camelot was simply a madman's dream.
1. Hiraeth

Hiraeth

(n.) [Welsh] a homesickness for a home to which

you cannot return, a home which maybe never was;

the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.


	2. Future Imperfect- the voice of your eyes

_(i do not know what it is about you that closes_

_and opens;only something in me understands_

_the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)_

_nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands_

'somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond'

-e.e. cummings

* * *

They met by chance- if chance it was- at an old bookshop, their fingers brushing together over an old copy of White's _The Once and Future King._ Gilt-edged, its leather cover worn and starting to crack. A beautiful old thing. She drew her fingers back, blushing as he looked into her eyes. Gray, they were, or green. It was hard to tell. Like the sea, they changed endlessly. Waves of dark hair framed her pale face. She looked like someone he might have loved once.

"I'm sorry," she lilted softly, "If you want it, it's yours. I already have a copy. This one, well, it's lovely. I just wanted to look at it." She smiled and looked away, nervously fingering the strap of her patchwork bag.

"It's all right," he replied, smiling back at her, "I don't have much room for extra things. If you want it, it's yours."

"You're sure?" she asked. He nodded. "Thank you." She pulled the book off the shelf, tracing the imprinted letters of the title with a slender white finger. "My mother used to read this to me. And the other tales of King Arthur and his knights. Of all the stories she ever told, these were her favorites. All the chivalrous deeds and the courtly love. She always told me that there were a lot of lessons to be learned in the Arthurian tales."

"Which was your favorite?" he dared to ask.

She looked up at him through her lashes, her eyes sad. "In this one? I think my favorite was where Merlin turned Arthur into all the different animals so he'd learn to see the world from different points of view. If we could do that to people these days, maybe things would be different." She glanced away for a moment; perhaps an unhappy memory stirred. Then she looked back up at him and smiled through her sadness. "But I think what I like best in the stories, is that you come away feeling like there's always hope, even when times seem too dark to believe it. I know," she blushed, "It makes me sound a bit maudlin, but there it is. Why do you read them?"

How many times had people asked him similar questions? A thousand? Ten thousand? How many of them wanted to hear the truth? He had made up a trite answer long ago that satisfied their shallow curiosity. But this girl- this young woman- somehow, there was something different about her. She deserved the truth. "They remind me of things I fear I've forgotten."

She lifted her chin to look him straight in the eye and pressed the book close to her heart. "Are you sure you don't want it? They say books are memory, after all."

"No, it's yours," he smiled back at her and shifted his weight as though to leave.

"What's your name, if I might be so bold?" she asked quickly to keep him from leaving.

"Merlin. My name's Merlin."

Her delighted laugh earned her a stern look from the shop owner. She ducked her head and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Like in the stories?"

That smile was infectious, spreading to him despite his defenses. "Yes, just like the stories." Despite his many, many years, he felt nervous again. His fingers picked at a loose thread on his coat sleeve. It had been long since a woman looked at him like that. And he was young again . . . "What's your name," he asked, "If I might be so bold?"

Her smile warmed like a sunrise in spring. "Vivienne. I'm named after the stories, too. Me and my sister, both. But don't worry. I don't know any dark magic." She waved the fingers of one hand as though casting a spell. The light changed, reflecting off the gilt-edged pages. A sparkle of gold flashed in her eyes.

"You only know white magic, Vivienne," he found himself saying, moved by something within he hadn't felt for years upon years. They stared into each other's eyes for a time, as though in the other, each felt they had found an answer they didn't yet have a question for. Then she blushed and looked away, the moment broken but not lost.

She chewed her lip for a moment, then came to a decision. "If I promise not to lock you away in a hawthorn tree, Merlin, will you step out with me for a little while?"

It was his turn to laugh loudly enough to disturb the clerk. "Yes," he said, "Yes I will."

* * *

Midnight found them in her little house by the sea, doors and windows shut up against the rain. A fire in the hearth was proof against the cold and the dark. His coat and pack were piled in a forgotten corner. Her copy of _The Once and Future King_ lay atop it. Neither paid them any mind.

He sat cross-legged in front of the fire, his hands making quick gestures as he neared the end of yet another story- he had told her a dozen already. She lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows with her chin resting in her hands, looking for all the world like she had stumbled into heaven, her eyes never leaving his as she drank in his every word. When he finished at last, tears streamed down her cheeks. "I've never heard a story of Lancelot and Guinevere like that before. He sacrificed himself to keep his promise to her- to keep Arthur safe- only to be brought back from the land of the dead to betray them both? That was terribly cruel."

He folded his hands together to keep them still. "It's how I remember it."

"But it came out all right in the end, right?" She leaned toward him slightly, her eyes lucent in the firelight. "Arthur remembered that he loved her?"

"Yes. In time, and after a great struggle, they found each other again." He remembered that for certain. A wedding, a hall full of light, a shining king and his new queen, and a love that proved eternal- if only in the failing memory of an ancient sorcerer. He hardly remembered what they looked like now. Some days he wondered if he hadn't dreamed it all. . . "I know the bards told it a different way, but I prefer my ending."

Vivienne sighed, a contented smile on her lips though tears still glistened in her eyes. "I think I like it better, too. I never liked the thought of them betraying Arthur like that. I know the poets think it's so lovely and tragic, but. . . I like your story better."

"You're the first one."

She smiled and ducked her head again. "Does that make me important?"

Merlin reached out, touched his fingers under her chin to tilt her face up. "Everything about you is important." He couldn't resist tucking her hair behind her ear. The dark waves were soft as nightfall. He pulled his hand away, afraid of what might come next if he wound his fingers into those silky strands.

She caught his hand, folding her fingers between his. Rosebud lips kissed the back of his hand. "Tell me another story," she said, "One about you, this time."

"I don't think you would believe me." His life had been so long, so strange. Weeks passed when he wasn't even sure if the tale of his life was his own, or something he had cobbled together out of old history books, measured by calendars drawn in dust.

"I'll know when it's true," she said, "Tell me another story."


	3. The Harbinger

_Constantinople, 1453_

For three days, the conquerors sacked the city. Before the last night fell, the sunset  
burned blood-clot red, the sky full of dust and smoke and the cries of the defeated. The vacant city emptied further as the populace was exiled save for a precious few, while the ornaments and bright-flashing stones of the gilded buildings were stripped away. The price of defiance.

They left the cathedral- the seat of High Wisdom- alone, trading orthodox chants for a muezzin's call. There was little need to do aught else. The mosaics, they would cover later. But there, under a dome matched only by the dome of the sky above, even emperors and sultans were stunned into silence. Mouths agape, the new rulers looked up toward the light where the light shimmered off fields of gold and the face of a god they could never bring themselves to destroy. They would only cover those watchful eyes and let time forget what was there.

They did not see the weary figure in the shadows watching them with summer blue eyes older than the city itself. The Harbinger.

Aching feet had brought him to the city gates just a year past. In nearly a thousand years, he had never bothered to come to the greatest city in the world until now. He should have come three hundred years earlier. He would have found a bright young thing full of vigor and life, her ports calling to the rest of the world, her markets heavy with more luxuries than he could have dreamed of. Alas, he had come too late. Constantinople was ancient now, an old woman trudging toward her neglected market stall because she knew nothing else, too tired to look for a brighter future.

How many times, how many cities had he brought himself to, riding the leading edge of a storm that would bring even the mightiest walls crumbling down? He could still name them- Damascus, Rome, Kiev, Jerusalem. And now Constantinople.

Fate was a twisted creature, he had decided. A century of staring down the silent black waters of Avalon had driven him nearly mad. He thought travel might cure his sorrow, but with every fallen city reminding him of his own failures, the world seemed determined to turn him into a gibbering madman.

If History's eyes were sharper, perhaps it would have recognized him, shown the rulers of these lands that he should be driven away. No longer was he Merlin the Magician, the sorcerer, the bearer of light. Call him now the Harbinger, the warning in the wind. Wise men would cast him out. None ever did.

On the morning of the fourth day, he gathered his few possessions, kissed the dragon ring on the silver chain around his neck, and slipped away. His last sight of the vast city was the dome of the great cathedral floating in a sea of hazy light. The muezzin's high call haunted his memory as he walked away and lost himself in the far forests, the mountains, the steppes. He could do no harm in the company of the birds.

Aimlessly he wandered, until one day he opened his eyes and discovered his wandering steps had brought him home- to Britain, to England. To Albion-that-was.


	4. Future Imperfect-the chambers of the sea

_"...__I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. _

_I do not think that they will sing to me. _

_I have seen them riding seaward on the waves_  
_Combing the white hair of the waves blown back_  
_When the wind blows the water white and black. _

_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_  
_By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown_  
_Till human voices wake us, and we drown.__"_

_"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock  
T.S. Eliot_

* * *

The wind from the sea was cold, bringing with it the scent of salt and the promise of snow. He hadn't brought a coat. The frigid air cut through his clothes, numbing him down to bone and cooling the fervor of his racing thoughts, slowing them so he might examine them one by one and sort them into a semblance of reason. He spread his arms wide, felt the winds buffet his thin frame and wondered if he might blow away with the snow and become as transient and fleeting as a snowflake, sharp and beautiful in one moment, then melted and gone in the next.

He felt Vivienne's weight against his back. She pressed her hands over his ears. Without looking, he knew she was smiling. "I've heard it said that if you listen too long to the waves, you'll hear the sirens singing and lose all sense. You'll jump into the sea to join them and be lost forever."

Merlin melted against her, remembering what warmth was after centuries of winter. "I thought I might blow away with the next snow. I feel like I'm not all here anymore, like I've left pieces of myself scattered all around the world. Just little pieces, but enough of them that I'm starting to fall apart. Forget who I am, what I am. I'm dissolving, and soon enough there will be nothing left of me. Just a voice. A whisper in the wind. A character in dusty books." He shivered. His knees buckled, and she guided him to the ground.

"You're cold," she said.

"I needed air. . . " he breathed. She'd brought his coat with her and draped it around his shoulders before wrapping her arms around him so he might borrow her warmth.

"What's wrong, _Mo Chroí_? You've been so quiet of late. Am I starting to bore you?" The brilliance of her smile took away any edge her words might have implied.

"Never that," Merlin whispered, looking into those changeable eyes at last. He raised a shaking hand to brush an errant strand of hair out of her face. Then he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. "I've been wandering this world for so long. I've forgotten more history than any alive could possibly know. I've seen empires rise and fall, and wars uncounted. I have such memories, Vivienne. Memories that no living man should have. And I wonder more and more if they're real, or if I've simply gone mad, as if I've read a hundred history books and believe that those lives are mine."

"And you think that if you tell me the truth, the whole, awful truth, that I'll turn away from you? Do you think I'll call you a liar?" Her hands were warm against his face, her lips soft on his cheek.

"You'd be insane not to."

"Love is a special kind of madness," she whispered into his ear. "Look at me now," she said, and waited until he did it, summer blue skies reaching to the ever-changing sea. "I have seen the faerie redes through the trees on a midsummer's night and merrows dancing beneath the waves. If I can see those and believe in them, is it so difficult to believe that Merlin himself might walk through the mists of time into this strange, modern world? The only thing I can hardly believe is that he might find me, of all people. But here you are, and here I am. And I promise you now, that if you leap into the sea to find the sirens, I'll jump after and hold your head above the waves as long as I can."

"You are a madwoman." He wound his fingers into hers. "You say you'll stay with me, but you don't know what sort of darkness I have within. If you did, you'd do what any sensible person would do. You'd leave me."

Vivienne laughed, the ringing sound of it stretching over the waves. "I'm not a sensible sort of woman, Merlin, but I know a thing or two about darkness, and a few more things about love. So let me tell you a story now." She straightened, her hands still entwined in his. The wet, loamy soil had soaked the knees of her jeans She paid it no mind. "You think I know nothing about darkness because I'm young, and because you say I've nothing but white magic in me. But I know a few things about the cruelties of men. My father was a hard man. He didn't start out being cruel; he loved my mother at first, and she him. But as time went on and his every effort failed, he grew angrier and angrier. Then the war took him away for a time and he came back broken.

"My mother, she was a madwoman, too. She kept loving him in spite of all of that. When her daughters came, she named them for the witches in her favorite legends- those of King Arthur. Witches who were strong, who knew their own hearts and minds, and weren't afraid to want what they wanted. My mother, though, she wasn't as strong as those stories. She couldn't leave the man she was growing to hate as much as she loved, and she couldn't hold onto her own mind. She became a madwoman in truth. One night, she took my father's gun and shot him dead. When she realized what she'd done, she threw herself into the sea. They never found her.

"And that's not even the end of the story." Vivienne blinked the sea spray from her eyes. Or were they tears? "My sister, Morgana. She was such a loving girl, but when she grew up. . . Fate took away the man she loved, and their child, too. She grew bitter, learned to hate. Such darkness grew inside her. Then one day she left. I've not heard from her since, but I've heard of her and the things she's done. People fear her. But if she came home today, I'd take her coat, make her a hot meal, and give her a bed for the night. How could I do any differently? She's my sister, and I love her. And if that makes me insane, then so be it."

"I'm sorry," Merlin whispered, his voice almost lost in the wind. He brushed the droplets from her cheeks.

"Don't be. Regret won't change what's happened, and what happened put me on the path that led to you. It's been a lonely road, and a dark one, but what a treasure I found at the end of it." Her smile brightened the day as though the clouds had blown away to reveal the afternoon sun. She kissed him, then, breathing life and beauty back into the shell that had begun to forget what both were.

He tangled his fingers in her hair, holding her close, accepting the gift of her- her light and darkness, her mad love, her laughter and tears. After drifting so long in the sea of time, here was one willing to be an anchor to keep him from washing away into the night-dark waters. It was too much to hope for, yet here she was.

Vivienne pulled away at last, taking his hands and drawing him back to his now-steady feet. "Come on. Let's go back inside, my love. It's going to snow now, and we've darknesses to light, and stories to weave."


	5. The Magician

_London, 1585_

They called her Gloriana. The Virgin Queen. She had no children, took no husband. Some said she had declared herself married to her country. She ruled absolutely, suffered no challengers to her reign, and turned a half-forgotten land at the edge of the map into an empire that would span the whole of the world. Good Queen Bess. Elizabeth.

She showed an old man a great kindness when she took him in and gave him a place to rest his weary bones- sunlit chambers full of books and candles and a few years of peace. In return, she came to him for advice now and then, asking him to use the patterns of the stars to foretell her future. She called him Doctor Dee, and if those shrewd eyes guessed that there was something more to her old scholar than the weight of a half dozen or so decades, she never spoke of it.

Another war loomed on the horizon when she appeared at his chamber door, her eyes full of fear as she paced about. Never before had he seen her so frightened. How could she not be? The Spanish King threatened to bring the Inquisition down upon her people and bring an end to the uneasy- yet peaceful- balance between the two warring religions. A peace neither her sister nor her father had been able to wrest out of the starry skies. He had seen the fires that had brought about, had been no more able to stop the new fires than the ones that had burned in his faraway youth.

Elizabeth. She burned nearly as brightly as Arthur had. The unwanted daughter and oft-discarded child had risen higher than her ancestors and achieved the glories they had dreamed about. And so he served a Queen again, accepting the chambers and the books and the duties because they reminded him of Arthur, the king slipping from his tired memory (_had he blond hair or brown? pale eyes or dark?)_, where he sometimes confused the Arthur of his true past with the Arthur of the minstrels' stories. Perhaps someday the true tales of Camelot would disappear entirely. Would he, Merlin, disappear with them? Days came and went where he hoped he would.

But that was for the future. His Queen had come for advice, came to ask him if England would rise or fall in these next days; if she would come to her end in a Spanish prison so far from home. ". . . at least tell me nothing is certain," she pleaded.

His Queen, pleading. . . It was all wrong.

". . . when the storms breaks," he found himself saying, "some are dumb with terror. And some spread their wings like eagles, and soar."

Words of hope. He had spoken words like them to Arthur, when times were dark. They had given him hope, just as they did for Elizabeth now. She smiled at last, gathering up her tattered spirits along with her silken skirts. Then she led her people to victory.

* * *

_A/N: I borrowed the dialogue from 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'._


	6. Future Imperfect- my arrow of love

_My arrow of love_  
_has arrived at the target_  
_I am in the house of mercy_  
_and my heart_  
_is a place of prayer_

_"Looking For Your Face"_

_Rumi_

* * *

In the spring, she taught him to dance. With the music crackling out of the speakers of the ancient radio, her body moved in time with the steps of whatever dance youth was caught up in these days. Real youth- like Vivienne, and not the facsimile of youth that Merlin wore. A young face masking a millennium and more; a young face that had forgotten how to be young. Until she taught him how to dance. And run, and breathe, and wish on falling stars, and the thousand other things that age steals from youth when it attempts to be dignified before trying to outrun death.

In return, he told her stories, clearing the cobwebs out of the attic of dreams that was his mind, shining light into forgotten corners until the half-remembered dreams emerged as full-blooded memory. By night, curled beside her in bed, he narrated the centuries and uncovered the true story of Camelot, Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table until he was altogether whole again- Merlin the Enchanter, Emrys. Servant, sorcerer, and a man altogether in love. There was only one more story left to tell. A story he shied away from, no matter how often he tried to tell it. Vivienne sensed its reluctance to be told and respected it. Stories had their own time and their own rhythm. Forcing the story would destroy it, so she let it go.

"_Tell me. . . _" was her nightly refrain, _About dragons, of Samarkand, Arthur's coronation, your travels along the Silk Road, of Lancelot's courage, voyaging to the New World, about Guinevere's reign as Queen. . . _So many stories. She didn't care if he told them twice or a dozen times, as long as he told them.

"Tell me. . . " Vivienne bit her lip in thought, tracing her finger along the line of his naked collarbone, then down the chain around his neck, her fingernail catching every link until she held the chain's heavy ring between two fingers. "Tell me about this ring. You never take it off."

"I've told you about that ring." Merlin smiled, knowing she would insist on hearing the tale again. He wound his fingers into her night-dark hair. The candlelight danced in her eyes. "But you want to hear it anyway, don't you?"

"Yes."

"All right. After Arthur, Guinevere reigned as Queen in Camelot for over forty years. Her love for Arthur was so great, though, that she couldn't bear the thought of marrying another so when her time came, she passed the throne on to Sir Leon's son, Constantine."

Vivienne held the ancient ring up to the light, turning it back and forth so the worn gold edges of the dragon of Camelot could shine again. "And when Guinevere died, you sent her to Avalon to join Arthur there."

"Yes. In a boat filled with the same kinds of roses that decorated the great hall on their wedding day. I still remember the scent of those roses. The castle smelled of them for days, even after they wilted and we took them away." He grinned and folded his fingers around hers, trapping the ring between their hands. "But the flowers aren't the point. When Constantine was dying, he passed the throne on to his son. The night before the coronation, I stole into Camelot unseen and replaced the signet ring with a perfect duplicate."

"You thief," she laughed.

"I've been accused of worse." His smile faded. "I'd had a vision that told me of troubled times ahead. I feared Arthur's ring would be lost, and I knew he would need it when he returned. Symbolism is a powerful tool for a king, and the signet ring is as great a symbol as a crown or a sword. His crown was gone, and I'd returned his sword to Avalon years before. But anyway. My visions were right. The Saxons returned, and then the Norsemen came. History ran its course and the Five Kingdoms of Albion became Britain, and then England and Scotland and Wales, and here we are today."

"Here we are today, wrapped up in one of History's Great Events." She sighed, and her eyes drifted shut. Merlin thought she had fallen asleep, but she looked up at him again, her ever-changing irises dark as the evening sea. "Do you suppose he'll come back soon, with the war and everything being the way that it is?"

"I don't know," he whispered, "I've given up trying to predict that. Every time England was threatened, every time a great war blew up, I thought Arthur would come back. So I went back to the Lake of Avalon to wait. And I waited and waited for so long. But I never saw anything in the water but my own reflection. Not the Sidhe, not the Lady of the Lake. . . "

"Freya. You told me her name, too." Vivienne brushed her thumb along his jawline, tracing it upward until she could run her fingers through his hair. "Time has been unfair to you."

"Life isn't a fair proposition, I've learned. I kept trying to make it so, but Fate kept undoing my work. All I wanted to do was save the world," he said ruefully.

"You didn't have to save the world. You just had to save Arthur. And you did that." She pressed her fingers against his lips to silence his protests. "And don't tell me you didn't manage it, because in all these stories you keep telling me, you saved his life too many times to remember. You helped him survive to become such a king that we still remember him, even after all this time. The Golden Age of Albion, you called it. Arthur began it, Guinevere kept it alive, and if you hadn't been there, it never would have happened. So don't you dare say you're a failure because you buried him when he was still so young."

He took her slender hand in his and kissed her fingertips. "I'll try to remember that, My Lady. But I still dream of Camlann, and of what came after. Some nights, I can't sleep. . ."

"And that's where you make your mistake, _Mo Chroí._" She let go of his hand and sat up. The blankets fell off her thin shoulders, the dark swirls of her hair writing elegant calligraphy along her pale skin as she stretched to blow the candle out. In the darkness, she settled beside him, her fingers mapping the length of his arm, her lips feathering kisses along his cheek until she whispered into his ear. "Some nights weren't made for sleeping at all."


	7. The Madman

_London, 1941_

When the bombs stopped falling, the cathedral still stood. A miracle, given the destruction that lay all around it. In the midst of the madness of rushing people and smoke and dust, a single old man stepped across the debris and looked up at the old dome silhouetted against the sky. His cackle was lost at first in the noise, but it steadily grew louder, a strange, joyful noise in the destruction.

A nurse approached him, a slender angel against the smoke. Her hand was gentle on his arm as she ushered him out of the street. Or what was left of the street. She led him toward a first aid station where her sister-angels tended to the bleeding members of the walking wounded. Her watering eyes never left his face as they walked, and his never left the cathedral. She caught a glint of gold as his withered fingers clutched at the chain around his neck.

_He's coming back, he's coming back. Surely he's coming back now. It's his nation's darkest hour, so he must be coming back. One miracle follows another. . ._

She tried to catch his attention as the words rambled on, growing stranger until she finally picked out _Albion_, then _Avalon, _then _Arthur_. She let his mind roam after that, settling him onto a chair to summon the doctor. "He's lost his mind, the poor thing," she told him when he arrived in a flurry of orders and impatience. _Send him on, then, if he's not bleeding,_ was the pronouncement. He was too busy to listen to a madman's ravings.

But she listened, stealing a bit of time as she led him, slowly, to the next station where they would take him. . . somewhere.

"Do you know where you are?" she asked.

_Albion_

Wherever that was, it wasn't where they were. "And who do you keep talking about?"

_Arthur. King Arthur. The Once and Future King. _

But Arthur was a legend, she insisted, and no more likely to show up than the war would stop tomorrow. He refused to listen, continuing his litany, as excited as a little boy on Christmas morning. He looked so strangely happy it seemed a shame to shuffle him away to some sterile hospital. "Stay here," she said at last, "I'll get something to calm your nerves." She slipped away, leaving him cackling in his chair, the words _'I must get to the lake,'_ following her out of the room.

He was gone when she returned with the syringe, and though she searched high and low and asked the other nurses, no one had seen or even remembered him. He had simply vanished, like the snows of winter. Or the peace of mind of any Londoner these days.

He left one thing behind, though. A single ivory chess piece- the white king, smooth and shining in the room's dim light. She kept it the rest of her days, a reminder of London's survival, and of small, strange miracles.


	8. Future Imperfect- the surly sullen bell

_No longer mourn for me when I am dead_  
_Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell_  
_Give warning to the world that I am fled _  
_From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:_  
_Nay, if you read this line, remember not _  
_The hand that writ it; for I love you so_  
_That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot_  
_If thinking on me then should make you woe. _  
_O, if, I say, you look upon this verse_  
_When I perhaps compounded am with clay,_  
_Do not so much as my poor name rehearse._

_Sonnet 71_

_William Shakespeare_

* * *

Three doctors held the same opinion. There was nothing to be done; they should go home and enjoy life while they could; there were no more resources to spare- didn't they know there was a war going on? For her own part, Vivienne took the news of her own demise quietly. _The brightest flames burned out the fastest_, seemed to be her philosophy. At least, when it came to her own being. While Merlin silently raged and stormed, she, at least, took their advice. She went home, and she lived.

She tricked him into living, too. "Dance with me," she would say, holding her hands out to him, peering out from under her lashes. Such coquettish gestures could not be denied, so they danced until her feet wouldn't hold her up anymore. '_Dance with me'_ turned into '_Te__ll me another story'_. He couldn't resist that any more than the dancing. But he only told the happy stories.

"You're in denial, my love," she said one autumn night while they were curled up together. Her fingers traced the words on the cover of _The Once and Future King, _the talisman of their meeting. He had read it to her again, except for the ending. He refused to read the ending. A faint, playful smile tugged at her lips, "Even your magic won't stop this. I know you've tried."

"I've said good-bye too many times already." He wound his fingers into the long length of her hair, as though weaving a spell that would keep her by his side for even a moment longer.

"Then you should know how to grieve, and then move on. I'm not such a bright star as all that." She snuggled closer, one ear to his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. How many centuries had it kept beating? What would happen if it ever stopped? "How did you recover from Arthur's passing?"

He held her tight and kissed the crown of her head. "You are the very brightest of stars," he whispered. He sighed then, his gaze wandering past the walls of their little bedroom and back through the ages until he remembered his far-gone youth and a pair of wintry blue eyes. He remembered . . . Once, it had seemed as though all those memories were mere stories he had made up- that someone had made up- and stuffed into his head. Now he wondered how he had ever doubted what his King had looked like, with that golden hair and those winter blue eyes. But with recovered memory came remembered sorrow, and how it had gone on and on. "I never recovered from Arthur's death," he told her at last.

She had no answer for that.

Autumn turned to winter, and Vivienne grew weaker for it. Illness carved her delicate frame to bird-boned fragility; her porcelain pale skin turned translucent, her arms and legs marbled with blue where veins showed through. Merlin stayed awake at night, watching her sleep, afraid she would slip away from him without warning. Sometimes she woke and saw him. Her smile brought the light back into her face, and they would watch each other until she drifted off again, or he would give in and curl up next to her, still awake, listening to her breathe.

Their months turned to weeks turned to days as her hourglass life ran out. Merlin felt himself flailing, trying to catch every grain of sand before it drained away. But even he had to give in sometime. He knew best of all, how time passed and changed the world.

She felt like gossamer in his arms- gossamer and moonlight woven together with a splash of the sea to make a woman who loved him so ridiculously. Who had been strong enough to bring him back from despair. Now he was the strong one, and Fate was conspiring to take her away from him . . .

"You have a story to tell me," Vivienne's whisper broke into his thoughts, "You kept putting it off, said it was never the right time . . . " She clutched the book- _their book_\- to her chest with all her failing strength. Its gilt-edged pages shone brightly as ever.

He brushed the fine strands of her hair out of her face. "And you want to hear it now? The last days of Camelot?"

"There's no better time than now," she sighed, and settled against him.

He stroked her hair, searching for the right words for this, the last story. Her breathing softened. "Once upon a time," he said, "there was a dream that was Camelot . . ."

* * *

_A/N: My apologies for the delay. I've been sick for the past week, and it's slowed everything down. But I'm feeling much better now, so I should be back to my normal writing pace._


	9. The Thief

_The Last Days of Camelot_

* * *

The windows were broken in the great hall. Shards of colored glass lay strewn about, though if the destruction were caused by nature or by children flinging careless stones, he couldn't tell. A few sticks of splintered furniture littered the floor under the moth-eaten tapestries. In his mind's eye, Merlin saw the faded hall as it had been in Arthur's day- the golden light streaming through the windows at his coronation, and the way the scent of roses had filled the air the day he married Guinevere. The citadel of Camelot had been a place of beauty and strength once.

But that was centuries ago. Even the city's great curtain walls could not withstand the assault of time. Even they crumbled- from age, from lack of repair, from forgetfulness. He could not remember when the slow exodus had begun, but it stripped the old city bare of her people as they left, moving to new cities far away- Salisbury, Canterbury, London. Those were younger places, brighter, and teeming with new growth, shining new cathedrals, and a history that didn't weigh so heavily on their minds. The legends of Arthur, Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table were already common, but no one knew which story was right. Even Merlin, who had lived through it all, sometimes misplaced a fact or a face. But empty and abandoned as it was, he never forgot Camelot.

His lonely steps echoed through the chambers and halls as he wandered the crumbling castle. From the great hall to Arthur's chambers, to the stairway that led to the tower where he and Gaius had shared chambers for so long. The tower was gone now; lightning had struck the roof and set it ablaze. Later storms completed the demolition. The memories remained- mostly- and he kept wandering, finding places that brought faces and voices out of time. Here was where Princess Mithian had told him Arthur trusted his council above all others, where he had poisoned Morgana, where he had waited a long and lonely night for Arthur after Uther's death, the tunnels where he had spent those too few desperate hours with Freya. And everywhere else, where the memory of Arthur tinged the bleached stones with gold.

Men had already changed the stories for their own purposes- to condemn one people or bring up another, to praise one virtue over another, to justify their wars, their greed, their love. Men would write anything about anyone to suit their purposes. Arthur's ideals, his perfect kingdom- and then Guinevere's- had flared so brightly, but its memory faded too fast. Men forgot that that peace was preferable to war.

Bitter tears stung the warlock's eyes. He brushed them away and found that he had made his way back to the throne room, had fallen to his knees in front of the spot where Arthur's throne once had been. He sighed and bowed his head, his fingers finding the heavy signet ring on its chain around his neck. "I am sorry," he whispered to the old stones and the legion of ghostly faces rising in his memory. "I am sorry I failed to protect you when you needed it most. I am sorry that lesser men have taken your place and forgotten what you fought so hard for. What you died for . . . " His voice broke, and he buried his face in his hands.

Lesser men, who lorded their power over their people, who declared war on each other for the sake of their own gold and glory. Lesser men, who built monuments to themselves, lest the passage of time make them unknown and irrelevant. Such men would pull this castle down piece by piece, if only to claim ownership of a piece of King Arthur's castle, turning the best of men into a mere figurehead to legitimize their own tyranny.

He would not let that happen. Merlin rose, his eyes at the level that Arthur's would have been. He imagined his King's- his friend's- wintry blue gaze meeting his. "Lesser men don't deserve to find Camelot. I couldn't save you, but I will protect your kingdom. No man will find this place, and no man will take your throne, even unto the last days. When you return, it will be waiting for you, just as you left it. And so will I," he promised.

He spread his hands wide before him, his eyes falling shut as he slipped into the state of mind where his magic flowed the strongest. Lips formed words unfamiliar to him, chanting on and on as golden light collected around him, spreading out and out until it had reached every corner of the crumbling city, infusing the ancient stones with a life they had forgotten they had. Shards of glass flew back into their windows, reassembling themselves into their proper states; the threadbare tapestries rewove themselves, their colors brightening until they looked the way they had the day they were hung. Cracked stonework renewed itself, fallen towers rose again. It was the work of a few hours to undo the decay of centuries. At the end of it, Merlin, pale and exhausted from his work, looked around again and knew that Camelot was restored to the way it was that awful day that Arthur had ridden out for Camlann and never came home.

One task remained, though. Merlin let the city breathe in its new life while he gathered the last of his strength. He had mastered the ability to step out of time- briefly- ages ago, moving outside of time's influence for a heartbeat or three, long enough to save Arthur's life more than once. This, though, was asking for more than a few moments.

He cleared his mind, focusing on now, and then re-ordered his thoughts into timelessness, capturing the idea of Camelot into a single moment and setting the spell into motion. Night had long since fallen around him, but within the little bubble of the spell in his hand, Camelot lived in a moment of glorious morning. There it would remain until Merlin broke the enchantment. When would that be? Perhaps even the gods didn't know.

Merlin released the spell and watched it grow for a moment before taking a final look around. Here he had been happiest, surrounded by the people he loved most. Time had stolen them all from him long before Camelot crumbled. The world's memory of this place, those people, had faded, but for one brilliant afternoon Camelot lived again. Would the same happen to him? Would he live on, fading into darkness and forgetfulness until someone came along to give him one last day in the sun?

Tears streamed down his face as he turned and walked through the darkened hallways. Memory filled the corridors with the sounds of the people who had lived there once upon a time, and Arthur's laughter ringing through the halls. The spell followed, consuming the stones behind him, pulling them out of time. Merlin refused to look back until he passed through the city gates. Only then did he turn and gaze upward. The spell had filled the city by then. Camelot was already fading away. The glow of the city shimmered as it disappeared, fading into the darkness, fading into the netherworld beyond time, slowly dimming as though simple night had fallen.

When the last mote of light vanished, Camelot was gone. Stolen. Taken from the world of men and removed into the realm of legend- like Arthur, Guinevere, and all the others. Men would search for it, but they would never find it. Outside of time, the city would survive until Merlin summoned it back. One day, the Once and Future King would return, and Camelot would live again.


	10. Future Perfect-once more under the stars

_My guide and I crossed over and began  
__to mount that little known and lightless road  
__to ascend into the shining world again._

_He first, I second, wi__thout thought of rest  
__we climbed the dark until we reached the point  
__where a round opening brought in sight the blest_

_and beauteous shining of the Heavenly cars,  
__And we walked out once more beneath the stars._

Dante Alighieri  
_The Inferno, Canto XXXIV_

* * *

He could not give Vivienne the funeral she deserved. There would be no boat filled with flowers to take her across the Lake of Avalon. Modern times, and all. The best he could do was cast a silvery urn of ashes across the lake's black waters and watch the cloud of her dissipate across them as the first light of morning touched the horizon. Her book- their book- _The Once and Future King_\- sat beside him. He had considered cremating it along with her, but . . . It smelled like her, of old bookshops, nights full of stories, and violets pressed and dried between the pages. She had loved the scent of violets, its flirtatious coming and going. Ever-changing. Just like she had been.

He closed his eyes, felt tears roll down his face. Once upon a time, Guinevere had bid him remember to love once in a while. They had nearly been her final words in this world, and he had tried to take her advice, had tried to love. Had loved. She had been right; love was a beautiful, precious thing. But each time he lost it, it hurt all the more, made the passing of years stretch further, pulling and pulling on him until he thought he would snap apart with the waiting and the wanting.

"What's past is prologue, but when does the future become now?" he breathed, his words lost to the wind. "When do I stop waiting?" His chin fell to his chest. The weight of every one of his too many years pressed down on him, a burden he had carried lightly just a few weeks ago. Now it felt like they would bury him next to this lake, so close but so terribly far from everyone he had taken there- Freya, Lancelot, Guinevere. Vivienne. And Arthur . . .

"Sir? Are you all right?" A gentle hand touched his shoulder, rousing Merlin from his despair.

He wanted to say, '_No. Let me be,'_ but his aching heart latched onto the kindness in the man's voice. "No, but I'll survive it," he said.

The hand tightened on his shoulder in vague sympathy. "Who was she?"

"She was everything. A light in the darkness." _Mo Chroí_, she had called him- 'my heart'. "She helped me remember things I thought I had forgotten. Helped me remember how to be happy." Merlin let out a long breath and wiped the tears from his face. She wouldn't want him to weep for her. She would want him to move on and find a new happiness. "I didn't have enough time with her." He never did, with those he loved best.

"Sounds like she was wonderful. Was this hers?" The man moved his hand from Merlin's shoulder to the book, easing open the old cover, running his fingers over the gilt-edged title page, and tracing the words printed there. "_The Once and Future King," _he said, "I loved this book when I was a kid. Especially the part where Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone. I could just picture myself in his place- some no-name boy becoming the King of all England."

Merlin turned his face toward the brightening horizon, remembering a morning long, long ago, when Arthur- _his _Arthur, not the Wart of the stories- had put his faith in a servant and drawn a shining sword from the solid rock. He had proven his right to rule then, too. "It was . . . amazing."

"It was that," a hint of laughter edge the man's words before turning sad again. "It's too bad Merlyn had to leave him after that. After teaching him so much."

"Everyone parts ways eventually, and we rarely find those we've lost. Time keeps moving us on," Merlin sighed, wondering where he would go from here. Not back to Vivienne's house by the sea. He couldn't bear that. There were so many places in the world to choose, and he didn't want any of them. Just the dark stone tower at the center of the lake, and that was closed to him forever.

"You seem familiar," the man said suddenly, "Do I know you from somewhere?"

His face felt like it would crack with the bitter smile that quickly faded. "I've been around a while."

"And I've been gone a while," the other said, "Fighting in the war. Did you grow up around here?"

"No," Merlin chuckled, "No, I grew up a long way from here." Time could be measured by distance, too.

"But I know I know you from somewhere. Maybe I dreamed it, but . . ." the man laughed at himself, drawing a faint smile from Merlin. "What's your name?"

"Merlin," he said. Part of him hoped that would finish the conversation so the man would leave him in peace. A smaller part- a wistful part- thought his voice sounded familiar. Like someone he had known once upon a time.

"Merlin?" the man's laugh brightened. "Like in the stories?"

Tears welled in his eyes. He and Vivienne had had the same conversation at their meeting. "Yes. Just like in the stories."

"Sorry. I'm not laughing at you. It's just that you're not the only one named after a storybook character. You see, you're Merlin, and I'm Arthur."

Merlin's breath caught in his throat. _'It can't be. It can't be_ . . . ' But the voice was so familiar, the tone, the cadence. . . He took a deep breath and waited for his heart to beat again, then gathered up his courage and looked up at the other man. He found . . . A pair of wintry blue eyes staring back at him, concern, and a bit of confusion welling in them. Golden hair. Strong, familiar features in a face he had not looked upon for centuries. "Arthur," he breathed, suddenly dizzy. So many years had passed. How many times had be come back to the Lake of Avalon and waited in vain for some sign of Arthur's return? And the one time he had come with no hope of finding his King . . . Now it happened.

Arthur frowned and reached out to catch Merlin's shoulders. "Are you sure you're all right?"

He blinked his tears away. "I'm fine," he said, meaning it for the first time in a long time.

"I think you might be lying, but I'll live with it," Arthur said, a crooked smile lighting up his features. "We should probably go. I think there's a law against sprinkling human ash in this lake. It's some sort of preserve." He grabbed the book and pulled Merlin to his feet. "I'll buy you breakfast if you promise not to turn me into a badger," his high spirits were infectious, spreading to Merlin despite his reluctance, pulling his lowering spirits skyward.

"I'd like that."

Arthur's grin brightened further as he turned to leave, "Let's go, then," he said, and clapped Merlin on the back.

Merlin paused, casting one last look over the lake's dark waters. _'Call it Fate . . .'_ Fate had brought him to Vivienne, who, with her gentle ways had spirited him away from the world- just like in the stories- to heal him and make him whole again. Then Fate stole her, knowing that he would bring her to Avalon, where Arthur would find him. _'Thank you,'_ he sent the silent thought across the waters and up to the sky, where the night's last stars were disappearing into the dawn. Then he turned, and followed his King into a new day.


End file.
